Guild Wars 2

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Zerker does have it’s uses, I completely agree. But, the people who are “zurker or gtfo” are the people I see going down in waves while fighting Jormag or Tequatl, while I usually remain at 3/4 health or more, even with 12k hitpoints compaired to their 20k+. And, that’s when I chuckle a little bit.

The people that are zerker or gtfo can either be good or bad. Frankly if they die at Tequalt it’s a face plam. Zerker or Sinister or Assassins or Viper are objectively better as long as you can survive on them.

Personally, I saw very few Zerker or gtfo people in my 3 years in the game. Most people, don’t even try to know what you use, a good portion just hope that most people will bring decent build.

Celestial would be your best choice if you don’t like zerker.

The problem Swagger is that I think most people would agree with the majority of your point, but you hyperbole so much while spitting on the content that, this usually trigger people. You come across as whining, while praising another game. At least, that’s what most people will get from your post.

If I ignore how you presented your post, here what I get from your post.

- Group are hard to make. That was talked about in length already and you are right. There is a lot of small or big thing that anet can do to help the community. I won’t repeat them again, we all know what they are.

- Lack of diversity in build. Most profession are pigeon-hole into 1, maybe 2 builds. Whatever we say, it’s true. There is other options and they are more than viable in dungeon and fractals. But in Raid, the margin is not that big for the majority of players that are average skilled. They need to use the best build because otherwise, they won’t succeed. They can’t bring direct damage engineer, condi ranger and Sword/Pistol Thief because at boss like Gorseval and Sabetha, they probably not gonna have enough dps. A good skilled group that can already kill Gorseval in no updraft? Ya, they probably can complete the raid with those build. But not the average group.

To me the problem can be fixed in 3 ways.
1) Balance. Different build, should be more equal in term of performance. I know we never gonna have perfect balance, but we should at least have decent option for condition, direct damage and healer.

2) Personnal DPS meter. Right now, I’m sure plenty of build are good enough for raid, even for the average group. But since there is just a handfull of people that have the time, the know how and the community credibility to test out build and to make them approved by the community. Take the Guardian Hammer build for exemple. It was never buffed since HoT so it was good in raid since day one 4 months ago, but it became popular only 1 month ago. Why? Because we had to wait enough credible people, able to make videos and the DPS meter to prove how it was good. For 3 months the community was kittening about the Guardian, kicking them all from raid and in the end it was one of the good profession for raid. A real ’’PERSONNAL’’ dps meter is needed in this game so that more people can test and provide evidence. I’m sure that plenty of other build, which are good enough for raid, are view as garbage by the community because not enough information about their dps are knowned. I’m sure plenty of people will realize that they do bad dps with one of the meta build and do better dps with an alternative build.

3) Easy mode for less skilled players, as an introduction/training for new players in raid and as a way for people without a group to create one fast, because it will be way easier to pug an easy mode.

Really constructive post OP (sarcasm). Bashing the content just for the sake of bashing.

1) Waiting and people dropping. There 3 aspects here. First, a group of 10 people is harder to make than a group of 5, especially for hard content. I would have been happier for hard mode dungeon and fractals, but 10man raid ain’t that drastic of a change. Second, anet didn’t provide enough tools to help create a squad (LFG section, LFG/Squad compatibility, Raid lobby, etc. Third, but most player have a big part of the responsability. Creating groups and guild to help in the faster group creation is a big part of the player responsibility and most people are lazy about that. They want a goop of same level of skill, same level of experience without making the effort of creating such group.

2) Professions are underdeveloped and roles are anemic, Always common builds and lack of variety. I don’t really agree, it’s pretty subjective. For exemple, guild made a no updraft gorseval with all 9 profession in their group. Thief and Guardian used be the only left aside and they fixed that. True enough, there is only 1 meta build per profession, but that’s normal since you can’t by definition have more than 1 meta build. You will always have 1 that is best even if the difference is small. That said, that’s a never ending battle and the game still need a lot of work in that area. More healer possibility, more profession with both Direct Damage and Condition damage good variant, inter profession balance, etc.

3) Boring. That’s 100% subjective. From what most people are saying on the forum, very few people dislike that current raid because they find it boring. The vast vast majority of people that dislike raid is either because it’s hard to make a group that work or because they just don’t like raid. The first could be fixed by what I talked in point 1 and an easy mode of the raid with less rewards to introduce players to raid, let them get experience and allow less skilled players experience the content. I’m not saying that no one is finding raid boring, but Judging by what people usually complain about raid, that seem to be a minority here.

Swagger.1459:

Some elements I like and some I don’t, and well within my right to provide constructive feedback.

I didn’t see any constructive feedback there. You may have some decent point (which were talked in length already, nothing new here), but you just seem to whine in your OP.

I would push for more equally, or near equally good build for each profession. For PvE, I currently see 4 type of build.

Direct Damage, Condition, Healers and Tank.

The last 2 are only for raids. And you also have some secondary role like CC, Active Defense and such, which can be brought and someone using any of those big build familly. You can be bring protection and aegis with a DH, that you are a Hammer DPS or a Hammer Tank for exemple.

So for exemple, I would put emphasis on build like Condi Mesmer or Healer Guardian and such. Add some build diversity.

There is inconsistency too. For exemple, engineer in both condi and direct damage have a hard rotation to reach their max dps. So they should be near the top of the DPS chart. Or profession like Thieves, which have limited support and low survivability should be high on the list.

I would limit the amount of Auto-attack build. They did it for Revenant (but they broke some stuff at the same time), they should do it with the Guardian and Thief. The guardian hammer build should need to use their skill 2 in their rotation at least to reach max dps and the difficult of the rotation should be to use 2 without breaking their auto-attack chain. The Thief, should have more emphasis on the backstab. A thief succeeding all of this backstab should be way superior than a thief just auto-attacking. Right now, someone doing their backstab correctly will only do about 10% more dps than someone just pressing 1.

rfdarko.4639:

It’s not always that people want to but can’t. Some people (a lot I think actually) aren’t interested in raiding. They are looking for some middle ground between open world and raiding. For myself, I don’t enjoy raiding very often simply because being in a large group is overwhelming to me, and is something I avoid irl and in game. Fractal selling was ideal for my daily routine because I could do it with one or two friends and just chill and feel comfortable – but there was skill and teamwork involved unlike openworld zerging or press-f-on-tree farming.

To suggest that people who are frustrated with the state of fractals should just “get gud” and raid instead I think is a little misguided. That said, we know new fractals are being developed, and it seems that the devs working on it are choosing not to engage with the community like the raid team is – so there’s really nothing we can say that will change anything or make new fractals come faster.

Ya and it’s ok. I mean, I hate, I mean completely hate the new PvP mode. I just can’t stand it, so I don’t play it. But my guild leader love it. I’m not going in the forum saying HOLY CRAP ANET. Why do you put time into this new mode, while not give us new maps for conquest or stuff like that. No. I accept that different people prefer different style of game and that the game isn’t designed around me. There will put resources on stuff that I don’t want to play, but also on game modes that I do like.

Rednik.3809:

Doing majority of fresh content only for 5-10% of pve population is a very bad idea. Blizzard learned that lesson pretty well, but for some reason Anet want to learn it again on their own.

So they should only make content for Open world and PvP then right and nothing else?

Also, the majority of fresh content are raid? So far we have 1,5h our content each week, that’s not the majority of content.

And finally, don’t pull numbers out of you kitten. You have absolutely no idea what is the percentage of people playing in raid. No freaking clues. We all know it’s not the majority but it could be anywhere between 1% and 40%. For example, in my guild we have 15% of the players who raid on a regular basis and about 20% who raid from time to time. About about 25% of them raid at least once or twice. My guild have 500 players. I’m not saying that it’s the number for the whole population, but i’m giving number that I know of, not numbers from my imagination.

I dislike the way you changed a lot of the healing skill. They were alright, they just needed some balance. Here a list of the Healing/sec of each skill. The first number will be the hp/sec when traited with their respective trait. And the second number will be the hp/sec which is the stardard medi build in PvP. Then the advantage and disadvantage of the skill.

Receive de Light : 162hp/sec ; 203hp/sec ; Adv: Heals Allies, Disadv: Long cast time
Litany of Wrath : 150hp/sec ; 231hp/sec ; Adv: 25% of dmg in heals, Disadv : Heal vary.
Shelter : 152hp/sec; 217hp/sec ; Adv: Block for 2sec
Signet of Resolve : 203hp/sec ; 254hp/sec ; Adv: Passive condi Removal
Purification : 412hp/sec ; 494hp/sec ; Adv : Dmg Ennemies, Disadv: Need to trigger trap

The goal of a balance, should be to make sure that the healing with the most disadvantage and less advantage have a better healing. For me this list should be
1-2) Purification, Signet of Resolve : Because Signet doesn’t have real advantage, and Trap have a big disadvantage, since you can’t use it while running aways for exemple.
3) Receive de Light come next because he have a big advantage. It’s a niche skill with it’s own identity
4) Shelter can stay the last one because it’s advantage is so big.

Basically, I propose to keep the current order in which the healing skill are right now. Purification and Signet of Resolve stay some of the most powerful heal, while shelter have the leas amount of hp/sec. That say, the vanilla heal are all way below purification. I propose to add 60% more heal to all of the vanilla healing skill. That give us these numbers.

Receive de Light : 325hp/sec ; 386hp/sec ; Adv: Heals Allies, Disadv: Long cast time
Litany of Wrath : 218hp/sec ; 300hp/sec ; Adv: 25% of dmg in heals, Disadv : Heal vary.
Shelter : 243hp/sec; 308hp/sec ; Adv: Block for 2sec
Signet of Resolve : 408hp/sec ; 469hp/sec ; Adv: Passive condi Removal
Purification : 412hp/sec ; 494hp/sec ; Adv : Dmg Ennemies, Disadv: Need to trigger trap

Keep in mind that I double the base heal for Litany of Wrath and not just added 60% to rebalance that heals. That ways, each heals are more equal and we will choose the heal we need depending on our need. See how Litany of wrath is still the worst skill, but the slowly came closer to shelter when we get to a full medi build. Litany of Wrath is a meditation after all and should have an advantage in a medi build. The strongest heal stay purification, which was not improved, so you don’t have power creep.

SproutJr.4802:

Great, I’m forced to play something I don’t want to because I don’t have an alternative for sustained dps. I don’t mind playing for the group, but it is silly that the best sustained dps just consists of pressing 1.

Well 2 things here.

1) No one is forcing you at anything. GS + Longbow or GS + Mace and even Scepter build all does decent dps for raid. You can choose to play whatever build you want in those. That said, pug also have the choose to play with whoever they want to. Tbh most of the time, they are not very bright about what they are ok with. For exemple, most raid pug won’t have any problem with a condi Engineer, but won’t allow a GS + Longbow DH. Even if in most situation, the DH will do more dps than the condi engineer because of the difficulty of the rotation. That make no sense, but they still have the right to take the condi engineer over the DH. If you were playing with friends or Guildmate you could argue and present facts to them. But in pugs, you can’t.

2) You are right that pressing 1 build are kind of stupid and anet should rebalance things differently. That said, it’s not just pressing 1 to be honest. You have an important CC role and are using a couple of traps in there. It’s still like 80-90% pressing 1.

Torolan.5816:

So weapons are way cheaper than armor. Ok, agreed upon. But how does that take away from the point that a raid user will have an advantage over someone who does no raids, how insignificant that advantage may appear to you and me?
It is not even so much about the properties of that legendary armor set only, it´s the exclusivity too. Of course there is also the argument that to get an ascended backpack, you had to farm fractals for a while. Although that is as wrong as hiding vital stuff behind raids is wrong, someone could theroretically make lvl 1 fractals over and over with no sweat to get his back, the only thing stopping him would maybe be some fractal shards that only drop at lvl 20+. Where is the lvl 1 raid?
Lets take the eternal title for example. That is a reward I am completely happy with. It shows that this person has made the raid and done something worthwhile in his opinion, at least until enough people with big enough purses were carried through the title so that it is only slighlly more prestigious than the dungeon master title.

I also already agreed that we are not at the point where you can kiss your ascended armor goodbye, and maybe my tinfoil hat sits too tight here.^^

It wil the same thing, at least we suppose here. Crafting 2-3 sets of ascended armor will cost you less than 1 set of Legendary armor. So the same logic here apply. Yes you have small advantage, but you pay for it.

That said, I agree that Legendary armor shouldn’t be exclusive to Raid. The skin yes, but not the concept of Legendary armor. They should have an legendary armor accessible for WvWers, PvPers and Open World Players. Or it should ask from us to play all modes. I good with skin exclusive to one mode, but not to category of item exclusive to one mode.

My point are

1) Legendary are not better than ascended. Someone attacking with a full legendary set will have the exact same offensive and defensive capability. Someone with legendary won’t be superior in-game to someone in full ascended.

2) Legendary armor have better quality of life than ascended gear and arguably better looks and animation. But that come at the way bigger cost in gold. You pay more gold for a legendary because you have a little bit more quality of live (stats swap) and better looks.

My point about 20+ ascended weapons is that. Yes you can swap stats on a Legendary weapons. But how is that an advantage? It costed you 20 times the cost of an ascended weapons. If you value so much the stats swapping capability of the Legendary, it’s because you want to use different stats right? So what is the advantage of the Legendary in that situation? I would much rather play 150 gold and get 2 Sword with the stats I want and Sigil I want, then to play 2k gold for a Legendary sword that can swap between 2 stats, but not sigils.

Torolan.5816:

And if you excuse me for a rather rude sounding but not rude meaning, you have
a) not read it right. right now, statwiese it is the same, but that is not a rule set in stone. See Anet change policies because people like the grind treadmill more than they expect and it is a market to tap in, and soon you would watch ascended become second rate armor.
b) it already is better. What would you rather have:
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells and can be refittet into an artillery tank given time and money (aka runeswap and stat swap).
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells that can be refittet for free as soon as you have some combat free time and always carries the best armor as soon as it is available(legendary armor).

That you don´t find the second tank is significantly better than the first one because it also fires standard shells or presently has the same type of armor as the first one is irrelevant to it´s superiority in general.

So your 2 points is

1) Legendary armor isn’t better right now, but might become better later if anet change how they work?

That point have no value. We can fear that they could make Legendary have better stats, but right now and for the last 3 years they didn’t. They also officially said, that they are not planning to add any other gear rarity better than ascended. If they ever talk about changing that, then you would have a point, but as today you don’t.

2) Legendary have better quality of life. True. That’s one of the advantage of Legendary. That doesn’t make them better, that’s just making them more easy to use. Now in reality there is 2 problems with your points.

- Legendary Armor like Weapon will probably not able to swap Runes/Sigils. That mean, that you are really limited in the change you can make to your build. You can’t use legendary to swap for another build, just another stats. I have 7 legendary on 4 different character. And the only time I was able to use the feature is when I swap between my Condi Engineer and my Condi Tank Engineer. What I’m saying is that yes, it’s a quality of life, but it’s a badly designed, limited quality of life that most people can’t use anyway.

- A legendary weapons cost about 2k gold to make. You can craft about 20+ ascended weapons with different stats, looks and sigils for that same price. And in theory, it should be about the same with Legendary armor.

TheBravery.9615:

Just exactly how much power creep is acceptable before it goes out of hand? What impact will it have in PvE? If your sustain is very high, you pump out amazing damage, PvE would become even more mundane than it already is.

The good answer is zero. Like I said everything not all buff are power creep.

You can balance stuff by buffing without adding power creep. Let’s take a exemple from the guardian. Spirit Weapon are bad and nobody use it. If they buff them so they are about equal to meditation build in PvP or GS + Longbow build in PvE. That’s a buff, but not a power creep. You are still around the power curve. You won’t go faster through a boss with this new Spirit Build than you could with a standard meta build.

Now if you buff enough your Spirit Weapon that it make them the new best build by a good marging. Let,s say that you can do about 23k dps with an Hammer build at Sabetha and that the new Spirit Weapons build allow you to make 30k. Then it’s a power creep of 7k. Now the old build are useless because everybody want to play the Spirit Build. Now why play Elementalist when you can have a build that does about the same dps but give you defensive advantage. Now people can have a way easier time in raid. What Anet will do for the next raid? They will increase the HP. Just like Fractal Boss have higher HP than Dungeon boss and that Raid boss have higher HP than Fractal.

Your question should be ‘’Just exactly how much buffing is acceptable before it become power creep? What impact will it have in PvE? If your sustain is very high, you pump out amazing damage, PvE would become even more mundane than it already is’’

Buffing bad skills, trait or ability so that they are more competitive to the good skills, trait or ability is called balancing and it’s a good thing. Buffing stuff, or adding stuff so that they reach higher on the power curve than anything you already have in the game create Power Creep, which is never a good thing for a game.

The point people are making about should we buff or nerf is because they added so much power creep recently that they kind of broken a good portion of the game and that people want to kind of fix the damage anet already did. I don’t really agree with that because even if it fix the power creep that HoT brought it would be a disaster on a PR level. That’s a big problem with Power Creep. You can’t fix it because of how people react. You can just balance thing out and make a commitment that never ever again add power creep.

Zantmar.5406:

Really saying u dislike power creep is like saying U hate new technology
The fact the game is full of power creep means the game and it’s content is moving on, and your so called likes and dislikes is falling behind.

Ok you really don’t understand Power Creep do you. Power creep isn’t the same thing as balancing. Not all buff = power creep.

I encourage you to watch this video. They will explain it better than me and this will be more enjoyable than to read my stuff.

Really dude. Hating power creep is like hating new technology?? Are you serious. Power creep is just bumping numbers on abilities. That’s not new technology. Of course I’m gonna hate power creep.

1) They limit build diversity. All good build now automatically need an elite spec because they are so much more powerful. Intead of having to decide 3 trait lines, it’s not decide 2 trait lines other than the elite spec.

2) They through balance off. I’m not saying that the balance pre-hot was perfect, balance is a never ending battle. But as time pass, it’s suppose to improve. Designer smooth the balance by nerfing what is too powerful and buffing was is too bad. But with a sudden addition of all those powerful abilities, all the balance is through out of the window and they need to start over, leaving the players with a very unbalanced game for months each time, until they fix basic kitten.

3) Power Creep also make old content obsolete. Bosses in dungeon that we used to kill in 30sec with a good group, can now be killed in less than 10second. The constant complain that dungeon are dps and dps only where do you think it’s coming from? No need to dodge or to block much because you can just explode the boss. So instead of always adding more content to you game, the dev team really only try to replace the old content that’s becoming trivial and boring because we are so much more powerful.

Mido.4920:

So i have been wondering if the Dragon’s Maw can be used to keep the souls in gorse’s split phase from walking to him. I know that knockback and knockdown doesnt work so…
Does anyone know?

No. Just Immo, Cripple and Chill work.

Zantmar.5406:

power creep obviously, nerf bat kills fun and induce rage, equalizing is a nerf and a buff at the same time which is time/ money consuming on anet’s part
power creep is: fast, easy, cheap, less rage.

edit:
i mean
1. wow this other trait is not as bad as before, maybe ill give it a try some other time
2. kitten this trait isn’t as good anymore but i guess ill still run it
3. wow my build just become trash

It maybe the fast, easy, cheap and less rage option. But it’s also the worst for the game. Power Creep is one of the worst possible thing you can have in the game and gw2 is full of it right now.

If you look at it objectively, ascended gear isn’t hard at all to get. Either by crafting it, or dropping it from fractal or buying from raid. It should take about 30 to 60 hours to get a full set of ascended armor. Which in my opinion is about right. What is the exact number of hours it should be will vary from one person to another so we can’t satisfy everybody. That said, they could improve the balance between some method of acquirering ascended gear and add more ways because not everybody play the same content.

1) Fractal 51+ is the only place where you have a reasonable way to get it. We used to have decent chance in level 30, 40 and 50, but that’s no longer the case. They really should add a daily level 76-100 with a higher chance than now and improve the chance in at least daily 26-50.

2) Crafting price skyrocketed with all the new sinks for ascended material (aka precursor crafting). They need to give ways for level 80 to get those low level material and to drop the price of these material a bit.

3) I don’t have data on the droprate for PvP and WvW, but I did quite a bit of both. PvP drop rate seem decent. Not extraordinary, but decent. While WvW from what I remember had a terribad droprate for ascended gear. But maybe it’s because you level up not that quick in normal WvW. Maybe that the droprate is good when you do EotM and rank up so much quicker. Of course, like i said, I don’t have data so it may just be my good or bad luck here.

4) Open World sources. That’s where some work need to be done. There is very very few source of ascended gear in Open World, especially in HoT, a place where all maps are level 80. It should still take 30-60 hours of open world to get a full ascended armor, but at least people should have the option to farm in the content they prefer.

Here some tips we use.

1) The canon are the bigger source of damage, but during the last phase, they are harder to evade because they are simply harder to see. So we send out players to canon in advance when karde spawn. For exemple, we usually launch to the platform a few second after each 30sec. The canon already started to shoot when we reach them and kill them. But when Karde is there, we go on the canon platform between 5 and 10 second before the canon appear (each 30sec). By doing that we arrive make like 5-6sec before the canon actually start to shoot, so we lose some dps (but only 1 person for 5-6 sec isn’t a lot since we only do that for a few canon at the end), but we also drop the amount of time the canon shoot at our group for 5-6sec.

2) The group move with the canon more. When the south canon is up, we make sure to stay on the north side. That seem obvious, but not everybody do that and it’s especially important in the final phase.

3) Bring 1 or 2 DH Hammer. Protection can do wonder and DH Hammer are easy to play (so people can concentrate on staying alive), do a lot of dps (3rd best at sabetha) and bring protection.

4) Have 1 guy killing the Turret. I’m usually that guy, I do about the same tactic with turret than with ball at Gorseval. I just put lava front under them. That way I don’t lose as much dps as someone else could and turret are dangerous at close range as you get hit by more projectile at once.

5) Try to keep Karde in the middle. Someone you can move it and it make the last 15% hp of karde harder since your melee can’t dpsing him when Sabetha come back. It’s especially deadly if Karde go into the quarter of the arena where the canon are firing.

ronpierce.2760:

I wasn’t specifically talking about DH. There’s a reason DH is not meta, part of that is our “strongest” and best put together things are traps, which are niche at their very core.

I was referring to the uniqueness and complexity of some of the other Elite spec skills and weapons. Especially weapons. While you could tone them down, at its core, a Guardian GS is pretty well put to shame by the Hammer of a Scrapper.

Also, my point is, clunkiness versus shiney new skills are part of that potential for power, as well as the need for all skills to come off as “usable”. Look at sword for example and compare it to Revenant’s sword (though revenant sword has design issues too between single target and multi-target). Blinding Flash is bland, and frankly weak, can’t be used to move forward, like a forward phase retreat, etc. If everything had to be toned down to the level of Hammer/Sword, I wouldn’t be very happy because for the most part, they’re clunky to use and not very fun.

Would also be similar to reverting Warrior Hammer back to it’s slower and immobile former self. There are a lot of things that just need to be reviewed with a modern philosophy lens, in my opinion.

A happy middle ground would be good. Some bumps/fixes/changes to less fluid things, and some nerfs to some things that are a little too encompassing, like the Scrapper hammer.

The other thing is you have to consider how it feels to lose a lot of what you’ve been given. That’s one of the most potentially dangerous aspects of powercreep is that it isn’t easily reversible because it just doesn’t feel good to feel like the Developers are trashing your stuff for some false sense of “balance” or appropriate “power level”. Because for the most part it IS arbitrary. The danger in power creep isnt the power itself, but how much becomes obsolete due to the power creep, especially as developers become tunnel visioned on a specific set of items (such as their fixation on meta builds and elite specializations).

Quality of Design, Diversity of Design and Balance are 3 totally difference things, but you seem to put them all together.

For example, the Guardian Sword is about Quality of Design. Like you said, Blinding Flash is not that useful and the sword auto-attack have work bad in a lot of situation.

But Guardian GS vs Scapper Hammer is all about diversity of Design. The GS isn’t badly design, it’s actually really nicely designed. They are just designed for different thing, so one is better suited for some content, while the other one is better suited for something else. GS have a really great design for PvE and WvW Zerg. You have a leap, you have a symbol, you have a really great CC for some situation, etc.

And finally, you have balance. That’s just the numbers. Something could be well designed, but poorly balance. Or the other way around. For example. You could remake the Guardian sword so it feel more useful. Make Blinding Flash work more like a teleport or a forward phase retreat as you said, rework the auto-attack so it doesn’t bug and change the skill 3 to be useful. That would fix the bad design problem. But it won’t fix the balance issue that Sword is one of the worst dps weapon of the guardian.

I agree that you don’t want to destroy the good design that came with the elite spec. But you can drop balance them without doing so. But like i said and like you said too, you can’t just nerf the elite spec or people will be upset. A middle ground would be the best option here, but I don’t think that it’s what anet want.

As for power creep, you are right and wrong. Yes one problem of power creep is that designed tend to power creep only a part of each profession, making the remaining of the profession weaker by comparison. But the power creep itself is bad because it make older content obsolete. Take dungeon for exemple. My guardian used to do 8k dps when the game started. Now? we do like 20-23k dps. So if you were fighting Subject Alpha it would take you between 24 and 30 seconds to kill him at the end of CoE and he would be able to attack you maybe like 9-10 times. If your group was bad, it could wipe easily.

Now? It would take less than 9 seconds to kill him. Even with a bad group, he will die before he can kill the group, meaning ; you don’t need to dodge, heal, use aegis, blind, protection or anything. The power creep make old content easier and make mechanics completely useless.

Of look at the Effigy in CoF path 1. They also nerfed it, so it wasn’t totally because of the power creep, but we used to need poison and to hunt down crystal to kill him because otherwise he would have too much regen. Now? We kill him in 6 second or less and we couldn’t give more of a crap about his regen. Hell, he doesn’t even have time to do much attack anyway.

Malchior.5732:

Any group can get really good with enough practice.

See that’s the problem. It’s not true. There is actually 2 problems with that.

1) Players have different level of skill in the game. I have currently about 22 players in my raid group right now and we can clearly see a difference in skill. The best example is playing Elementalist at Gorseval. Some in our group don’t die and are able to keep the arena clear of balls, even on the first try. For other it took 3-4 weeks to get it right. For other? We swap them to another role because they just can’t. Some players we had to kick from the group because they were just not improving much. Other quit themselves because they were doing the same error over and over and just could do it. The practice is one thing, but each player have a level of skill and whatever the amount of practice, they won’t be able get better at it. For some it’s the attention, they can’t focus enough and miss what they are suppose to do. For other it’s the multitasking. If they focus on a mechanic, they won’t be able to stay alive, if they stay alive, they will have a terribad rotation.

2) Some players could get good enough with enough practice. But the amount of practice is just too high. They will give up, or their group will push them away.

And the thing is, it’s not a black or white issue. You are not either good enough or bad enough. It’s a spectrum, going from the guy in my guild that do guild rush for the last 2 years and is still always the last one to cross the end line if he don’t just give up after 10 tries. To the guy that can succeed to any mechanics with any profession on his first try.

So, for the sake of simplicity. Let’s say that everybody have a skill level from 1 to 10. At what difficulty should the raid be? At 7? 8? 9? The higher you go the less people will be able to complete it, but the more fun the guys that can complete it will have. Like I said, you want to add difficulty because the current difficulty is lower than you level of skill. But by doing so you will exclude some people from doing the raid and ask yourself what would you do in their shoes. What if the difficulty of the raid was push high enough that your group couldn’t complete it on a regular basis. Each week, you wouldn’t know if you group would be able to complete it, even after weeks and weeks of practice. Imagine the tension inside your group and the blaming that would be going on.

Like I said, the ideal would be different level of difficulty to satisfy everybody. Hell every single game have a difficulty setting. But if that doesn’t happen, you can put the single difficulty to high or you will limit too much how many people can complete the raid.

SproutJr.4802:

A lot of things need ascended mats, and the difference between things like precursor crafting and ascended armor and weapons is just the assembly. The ways to farm for the mats aren’t very enjoyable. People leveling crafting are being affected by the price of their mats because high level players don’t have reliable ways of getting leather and cloth, which drives the price up.

True. With HoT the demand for low level materials skyrocket and so was their price. Anet really need to increase the ways to get those mat for level 80 character.

That said, the effect on crafting cost is really small. Yes the price of level crafting 0-400 almost double for most crafting profession except jeweler and cooking. But they went from about 10-15gold to 25-30 gold. That’s still really really small and not a problem at all.

So you are right that the price of low level material is a problem right now, but it’s not a problem for levelling crafting. My bet is that you level up your crafting by yourself, which probably cost you a lot more than if you were following a guide like on gw2crafts.net

ronpierce.2760:

Here’s my 2 cents abkut power creep. First off, yes, I dislike it. There are elements of new elites that are too “full”, especially Scrapper/Revenant, but nevertheless, the other aspect of the power creep is that some of the newer stuff is better designed. Guardian’s base weapons are soooooo outdated these days, that frankly, I’d be more in favor of conforming to the “power creep” a little bit, because ultimately it would mean better design.

What of the new stuff for the guardian is better designed than the old? I mean there were specific stuff in the old guardian that were badly designed for sure like Spirit Weapon and some trait. But in general, I don’t see the new elite as better designed.

For exemple, I think that it was better design when the meta were GS + Mace/X which give you a good rotation to make and in PvP we had medi guardian with Scepter/X and GS or Hammer and Bunker Guardian. There was diversity in build. Now it’s just all about GS, Hammer, longbow and Traps.

Anyway, power creep have nothing to do about the quality of design. You can make something that is well designed, but not a power creep. They could make well designed trait and weapon, without making them more powerful than previous iteration.

Rhyav.4812:

I’d say if you have to buy all the items, leveling a profession may cost a bit over 200g or 300g if you buy from sell orders (just making fast math)

Bad math. That was the price when level 500 was introduced in the game. Now it’s more around 50 gold to get from 0 to 500.

SproutJr.4802:

So far I have gathered that it’s not necessarily too hard to get, but for players without time to play quite a bit are at a big disadvantage. It seems that there are ways to farm for the mats, but the same ones are always mentioned and they aren’t the most fun. Requiring lower level mats puts players leveling crafting at a disadvantage due to the lack of ways for high level players to get them. Anything else of note?

Well the thing is and I’m sure you already heard it. Ascended armor is not needed outside of hardcore content. You don’t need ascended armor in raid, but it is true that good luck finding a group if you don’t have it. But raid is an hardcore content. For the average group it will take between 5 and 20 hours to be decent at 1 boss. In the end there will be 9 boss for a total of 45 to 180 hours just to practice. So why 29 to 60 hours is too much, if you are prepare to spend 45 to 180 hours just to practice a content with constant wipe?

Same with Fractal. The vast majority if not everybody doing fractal are doing fractal 78+ only once. We are all doing our daily between level 51 to 77 so you really only need 109 AR and you get reach that with no ascended armor. You just gonna need 3 +11 and 2 +10 instead of 2 +11 and 3 +10. Really not a big difference.

So really. Ascended armor are only needed for hardcore content. Level 78+ fractal and Raids. So why ascended armor should be balance around casual player which won’t play fractal 78+ or raid anyway? Both of those things ask more time than to craft the armor in the first place anyway.

The only place, where ascended armor could be a problem would be in WvW roaming. But really the armor there don’t give you a big enough advantage to change the outcome of a fight. The more skilled player will win even if he have an exotic armor and fight a guy in ascended armor. If both player are equally skilled, then yes it could make the difference, but how many time you fight a equally skilled player in WvW in a 1vs1?

Malchior.5732:

We practice and get better until we beat it.

So you are saying that there is no limit? Your group have one of the highest level of skill of the whole game and whatever Anet through at you, you will always be able to beat it?

They could make the canons fire each 10 seconds and make the flame wall a Flame cross dividing the platform in 4, while each 3 of the mini boss spawn each at each phase and you would still have no problems?

At some point, they will reach your level of difficulty, when your group can’t keep up and that’s the problem. Each group have their limit of skill and what make your limit more appropriate than the limit of any other group?

Malchior.5732:

This is only the first raid. I would be severely disappointed if they didn’t get harder (to the point where everyone is trying their hardest) and didn’t also demand full ascended gear to complete.

I would be against that to be honest. I think that the difficulty is just right. In the ideal world there would be an easy mode and an hard mode for the raids to satisfy everybody, but it doesn’t seem to be Anet’s opinion so they can’t really make the new wing much harder than the current. My first raid group would be up for the challenge if they make it harder, but we would probably need to kick a bunch of people from our second group, which is a bit sad.

Hard to balance only 1 difficult scale for everybody. It will always be too hard or too easy for someone. Everybody talk about their own experience. You want to make the 2nd wing harder because that’s fine for you, but what if someone else which is a better player want it hard enough that you can’t succeed on a regular basis with your team?

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re absolutely correct; they could utilize mechanics like that to discourage selling a little. It’d be interesting to have something like that in a raid boss!

It would be interesting because it make the fight more interesting for everybody, not because it would discourage selling. I would hate if they start their design with the idea of discouraging selling. If they dislike selling, they just have to chance their stance on it, no need to go the sneaky way.

That said, there is pros and cons about that.

It would be a good thing because it make the fight more interesting for everybody. For example, Sabetha is a lot more interesting for the 4 ppl that go for the 4 canons. They have a lot more to do and the change of pace is actually important to keep the fight from being boring.

But it would also be a bad thing because, not everybody have the same amount skill. Some people prefer to play PS Warrior because it’s simple so they can focus on staying alive. Some people prefer to play Engineer because that stimulate them to focus on their rotation and to know that their skill improve their result. It’s the same from raid encounter. Some people prefer to have a lot to do to keep them buzy. I like focus on my dps rotation, then run to my canon, jump kill it, jump by while keeping a eye of the wall, then run to the other side of the platform to launch the bomb to the next canon while Lighting Flashing through the wall. It’s high pace, my adrenaline is pumping and I love it. But for a lot of people, that’s just too much for them. If you have a specific role for all 10 players, you limit by a lot the amount of group that will be able to complete the content. You lose this adaptability that raid have now that allow you to put your best player on the hardest role, while leaving the easiest role for others.

King Cephalopod.7942:

Thaddeus: I think it would be better to bite the bullet and just try to beat down the power creep, even if unpopular. Might cause a momentary drop, but if done right over time it would make things better.

Maybe. But let’s be honest. Anet don’t seem to give a crap about the problem that power creep bring since they in the last 6-8months, they gave us 2 of the biggest power creep update ever in this game (the specialisation update and HoT).

So they might care about balancing Vanilla vs Elite Spec, but they sure don’t seem to care about reversing or limiting the power creep. Which is sad when you think about it. I can understand the average player not understand what huge problem power creep can bring to a game. I can understand a designer of a game like WoW or Borderland who use power creep to their advantage as one of their core concept. But I just don’t understand how the designer of GW2 can include so much of it in such a small period of time.

I would much rather that they get back to pre specialisation patch or even pre-ascended level of power, but it won’t gonna happen. Just too much work and people will scream murder and quit the game. Just take a look at dungeon. They actually give you better reward now than they used too. You get more gold per hour in dungeon now than before HoT, but the reality don’t matter here. People just keep the nerf in mind and that’s all what’s important.

That’s why I say, that Anet can’t just nerf everything they did in the last 6-8months, even if it would be the best choice. But what they can do is to nerf a little the Elite spec and buff the vanilla spec.

Now does Anet really want to combat elite spec imbalance or power creep? Maybe for the elite spec imbalance, but I’m pretty sure they don’t give a crap about power creep, which is really sad.

To be honest I never understood why there is such a thing as Shoulder box and such. All ascended box should allow you to take whatever piece you want.

Here some actual numbers.

If you want to craft an ascended armor. Let’s take heavy armor for this exemple.

It will cost you 24.95 gold to reach 400 and 15.30gold for 500 in armorsmith. For a total of 40.25gold.

It will cost you 533.60 gold to buy everything with buy order and craft your armor. With daily cap on Deldrimor, Damask and Elonian, it will take you 25 days.

Farming this amount of gold at around 10 to 20gold per hour will take you between 60 and 29 hours depending on what’s your method.

If you want to get that armor from fractal 51+. We have limited amount of numbers so the probability are not that precise. But so far it seem that we have an average of 11.4% chance of getting an armor chest. With a population of 771 chest from KING’s numbers it give us a confidence interval of 3.5%. Meaning player should have between 7.9% and 14.9% chance of getting ascended armor. This mean that player should have 6 ascended armor chest after between 41 and 76 daily. At 30min per daily, it would take between 21 and 38 hours of fractal spread over 41 to 76 days to get a full armour. After that, you need to add the price to swap the stats. Of course those are stats. Someone could be unlucky.

Finally in raids. It will take you 1300 shards for a whole set. You can get 100 shards per week by raiding for 3-4 hours with the Map Reward bonus. So it will take 13 weeks and between 39 to 52 hours to get a full set. Not counting the chance of dropping ascended armor on your weekly.

Zantmar.5406:

Giving identity is great save
For example vitrue of resolve could give resistance
Justice could give it quickness
And courage could cause taunt and damage reduction
U don’t simply have to nerf something that Is good to be in line with garbage

I don’t know if you talked about my post, but I didn’t nerfed anything, I only buffed vanilla resolve.

I already talked about it, but I really think that the balance for wing of resolve vs virtue of resolve and Purification vs every other heal should be more aggressive.

Virtue of Resolve passive = 84hp/sec
Virtue of Resolve active = 32.5hp/sec

Wing of Resolve passive = 84hp/sec
Wing of Resolve active = 129hp/sec

I would rebalance it by giving each Resolve their own identity. If Wing of resolve active if his strength, then Virtue of Resolve passive should be his strength.

Buffing the Virtue of Resolve passive from 84hp/sec to about 129hp/sec, but
also buffing the Virtue active to 84hp/sec. I would push the CD to 60sec and it would heal for about 5000hp.

The trait absolute resolution would push that difference even more. On DH, it would have a group condi removal each 30sec, but won’t get much use out of the passive buff since you will want to use your active as much as possible. While Vanilla with that trait would get the most healing out of the virtues since with the buff the passive would now be of 161hp/sec, but with a 60sec cooldown and less healing, the active part of the trait won’t be of much use.

Zantmar.5406:

So basically ur solution of equalizing DH to base guard is to nerf dragon hunter? I’m sorry but that is just Terribad

What was terribad was Anet’s decision to power creep the hell out of the Elite Spec. Either we power creep the hell out of base profession to rebalance them or we nerf the elite spec. Ideally, elite spec should have been nerfed become their introduction, but it wasn’t the case.

Both solution are bad because buffing the base profession will add even more power creep and nerfing the elite spec will probably be meet with outrage by the community. I think that the best solution would be a little bit of both. Buffing a bit of base profession and nerfing elite spec.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Because fully traited into Meditations would imply you’re also taking Smite Condition on heal, which is another Monk’s proc. Going into his trait changes, nothing happens to Smiter’s Boon.

The problem is that if you use a meditation build for PvP with both Monk’s Focus and Smiter’s Boon. You are still better off with the trap. For exemple, in PvP. Most Guardian use both Trap and Meditation.

Purification will still trigger smiter’s boon and we still have Monk’s focus. In that situation the trap will heal you for 494 hp/sec

Right now? In that situation, Litany of Wrath would heal you for 231 hp/sec + the damage into heals.

Litany of Wrath was already okish, but one of the less good healing skill pre-hot. Now with Purification, it’s just not in the game anymore.

Retro.6831:

I’m not saying I agree or disagree with you, but challenging content and raids are not mutually exclusive. You can have content that presents a challenge without it being in the form of a 10-player raid. There could easily be challenging dungeons or even solo encounters; in fact, the Queen’s Gauntlet (especially Liadri) is a great example of that. It’s even timed and “instanced” like raids, but takes the form of single player content instead.

Do not assume that the only way you can be challenged is via raids.

Completely true. And to be honest, I would have probably preferred hard and challenging 5man dungeon and fractals. If they could get back to the old old first fractals where you couldn’t have enough AR for the highest level and you had to dodge every single agony attack or die. ANd if they could had use the idea of skull that Wooden Potatoes made a video about, i would be so much happier. 10 man are just harder to prepare and organized. A lot of people that could be good and have a great time with challenging content, can’t because they can’t form a group.

That said, Anet officially told us that dungeon are dead and they pretty much screw up fractal for me. So in the end we only have raid. Not perfect, but It’s the only content that keep a lot of players in the game.

OP still have to prove that ascended is more worth it in term of direct damage, then condition, healing or surviability. He just talk about raw stats of ascended, but not the end result.

He need to show that. Direct damage exotic vs ascended equal a certain percentage increased in damage and do the same thing with surviability or condition and see what is the result.

Xyonon.3987:

I agree that they mustn’t become clones. But the matter here is something completly different – it’s about who gets what bonuses from ascended gear. It’s not that it would be such a big deal but it’s simply not fair the way it is.

How it’s not fair? With that logic, it’s not fair that condition bypass toughness. It’s not fair that direct damage need 3 stats, while condition only need 1. It’s not fair that condition damage can be removed, but there is not such a thing for direct damage. It’s not faire that protection reduce direct damage by 33%, but Resistance stop 100% of condition.

Each of those individual situation are not fair. They advantage one type of damage over the other. But when you take all of them together, they are suppose to balance each other. Only the end result count. If you argument was, condition damage build are decent in exotic compare to direct damage in exotic, but that when in ascended, direct damage become more powerful, then yes you would have a point. But it’s not the case.

Sorry but this make no sense. We don’t want condition and direct damage to be clone of each other. They both work differently and that’s fine.

King Cephalopod.7942:

Isn’t the only reason DH is 3rd best dps is because hammer autos and in raids you get huge quickness uptime? But yeah, elite specs mad OP. Waiting on nerfs/alternate lines (healing line when?).

Well ya Hammer auto is strong. That’s the point. GS + Bow have lower dps in long fight, but higher dps in short fight.

As for quickness, it’s not a raid thing, it’s a Chronomancer thing. As long as you have 1 half decent chronomancer, you will have perma quickness.

It’s true that Quickness boost the dps of the Guardian Hammer more than other professions, but it’s the exact same thing with Thief. Yes with zero quickness, the dps of the Guardian wouldn’t be 3rd best, but it wouldn’t bad either. Without quickness, the dps of all build will drop. The dps of the Guardian Hammer will drop a little bit more, but you also have to keep in mind that Alacrity after a lot less the Guardian Hammer dps than Elementalist for exemple.

I heard some people say that in a party without perma quickness, the dps of the guardian would be bad. It’s not true. It would probably not be 3rd best, but maybe 4-5th? It would still be competitive.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Thaddeus.4891:

I disagree with that and you kind of shoot yourself in the foot with your own argument.

There is no skill limit to getting the PvP Legendary back item. You can play rank ruby/emerald league during enoug season to get your legendary back item eventually. It will take longer, but you whatever your PvP level you can get it, even if you are the worst player ever.

I read the rest of your post, but I wanted to hone in on this. There are a lot of people who can’t get to sapphire, let alone ruby. To get the legendary, you need 125 tickets. The legendary will only be available for 4 seasons before they introduce a new one. That means you need to hit the 35 ticket threshold each season to make it, which requires you break out of emerald into sapphire every season. That’s actually pretty difficult for some people, especially now that ANet has refined the matchmaking system. I wouldn’t say it’s exclusively skill-based, but it’s certainly more skill-based than anything else that’s comparable.

Even disregarding that, I think that enforcing some kind of skill gate on legendary armor is just fine. Ultimately, if someone wanted it that badly, they could just as easily pay a group to carry them through every collection item.

Ok I never heard about that seriously. You are saying that there will only be 4 PvP League seasons and that after those 4 season, you won’t be able to complete the Legendary Back Item?? Do you have a quote on that? Because if that’s real, then it goes near the top of my list of bad design in gw2. Really 4 seasons and then kitten you in the kitten? So if someone buy HoT in 1 years, then oh sorry no legendary back item for you? I just can’t believe that Anet would be that stupid, pls tell me that I misunderstood what you meant. My friend, stopped doing PvP because he focus on HoT and raid. He is not bad at PvP, but he probably will only be able to reach ruby. Are you telling me that this friend won’t be able to get the Legendary back item if he don’t back into PvP during the next season? Really??

To savacli.8172. No you probably won’t be able to reach Legendary rank. Well at least I have high doudt. Reaching Emerald is a joke, Reach Ruby is super easy. Going higher, not so much. There is a big big big difference between Ruby and Diamond. Below ruby, you only have to get some consecutive wins. You just need to get a win ratio higher than 50% during a small period of time to get to the next tier. You don’t need to keep that 50% ratio. You could win 5 match, then lose 50, then win 5 and continue like that and reach ruby, even if your win ratio is about 10%. After ruby, you actually need to keep a 50% win ratio while fighting people with minimal level of skill. So if you want to reach Legendary level, you actually need to be able to compete against the other people in legendary.

Grogba I had the same issue 1-2 months ago. I tried everyday and never got it. I posted on the forum, send ticket in-game. Nothing. Here what I did and It was fixed in like 1hour.

I went in the Support section on top of this website. Top right you will have submit a request, and I wrote an e-mail about my problem. 1-2 hours later I receive the item via in-game mail from the Support team. I can’t say 100% that you will receive a answer that quick, but for me it was super quick.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Raids should not have an easy mode with access to all of the rewards, especially not legendary armor. Not all legendary gear is for everyone. You can’t have the legendary PvP backpiece without playing ranked PvP. Notice how they’re not making it available to people who only play custom arenas? That’s intentional, and it’s the same reason why raids at their current difficulty are the only way to get legendary armor. They don’t want to devalue peoples’ accomplishments by making it easier to acquire.

Additionally, they added a search filter to the LFG in the most recent patch which has helped tremendously with finding people looking for raid groups. If you search for the boss name you’re looking to kill, you’ll find other people searching for that same boss. It isn’t a substitute to a raid category in the LFG, but it is a very useful temporary way of bypassing the issue.

As for some way to show “skill”, the best way to do so is to simply watch them play. You can always replace them if they’re bad.

I disagree with that and you kind of shoot yourself in the foot with your own argument.

There is no skill limit to getting the PvP Legendary back item. You can play rank ruby/emerald league during enoug season to get your legendary back item eventually. It will take longer, but you whatever your PvP level you can get it, even if you are the worst player ever.

There is no skill limit to getting the Fractal Legendary back item. All achivement and task you need can be done less lower than level 50 fractals if I remember correctly.

The legendary weapons are pretty much behing easy task and gold grind.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the fact that legendary would be behind a skill gate, but this was never the case for any legendary, why would it be for Legendary armor? If Legendary should be behind skill gate, good but then put skill gate on all of them and it’s a bit too late for that.

Tbh. I don’t mind either way. They could give whatever reward for easy mode as long as it’s bit lower than the current raid.

But for OP. 40 Tries is nothing. I kill all 3 bosses each week and I have a raiding guild. It took us 12 hours or about 70+ tries before our first kill. Of course we had to learn by ourself each aspect of the fight since nobody could give us hints at the time. But still, if 40 tries is too much for you raid isn’t maybe for you. It’s actually the best part if you ask me. I had a lot more fun dying while learning the fight than just going through all 3 boss in 60-90min each weeks.

Wolfric.9380:

They sem to do it on all classes. 1-2 builds in focus rest ignored.

Yes and no. The community is great at putting considering only 1 build as good and everything else as garbage.

For exemple, in PvE Hammer , GS + Longbow, GS + Mace, Condi and Specter build are all pretty much at +/- 15% difference in term of dps, in a game when the DPS of the same build can easily vary by 50% depending on how skill the player using it is and what is the content.

Is it anet fault or is it the community that always only focus on the very best build in one specific situation and put everything else in the garbage category by default? When Dungeon and Fractal were used to test the build and GS + Longbow was view as the best, everything was garbage. When raid were used to test and Hammer is now view as the best option, everything else is garbage.

I’m not saying that anet is doing fine. Sword and Spirt Weapons are still gargabe, the PvP balance is a bit more complex and very few profession can do a very good healer for raids. But I believe that whatever anet do, the community will limit themselves a lot more when it come to build diversity.

DragonChaser.3170:

“3) I really don’t get that question.”
Its like we both explained basicly, you are forced to wear a horn for movement speed as secundairy instead of using a gun to unleash a volley at an enemy and then quickly switch to your great sword and smash the enemy.

“Like I said, EotM will give be one of the best way to level up, but not everybody like it.”
I googled this quickly, this is PVP? 0__0… so PVP is the best way to lvl up… ok 0__0

Any quick way of earning gold in this game?.

Tnx for the reply though.

Well, you are not forced to use the Warhorn. There is plenty of movement skill and source of switfness. Each weapons have their strength and weakness. If you want even more mobility use Sw/Warhorn. If you prefer rifle take rifle. What do you want, a weapon that give you range attack, best dps, blocks and mobility?? That’s called balance, you need to make choice of what strength you prefer and what weakness you can live with. That said, there is plenty of way to keep the mobility other than warhorn so. The GS have 2 great movement skills, take Bull’s Charge and Signet of Rage. That’s plenty enough mobility so you can take rifle.

EotM is kind of pvp, but not really. It’s a mix of PvE and PvP with most zerg attacking fort defending by mobs and rarely players. It really depend on the people on the map. Some prefer to make some zerg vs zerg, other prefer to attack fort after fort.

Yes, but several of them are in the end-game. That said you can make gold by

Farming low level material. One of the easiest is Iron and platinum farming, which can be done at low level. You can use gw2timer.com to find where are the rich vein. And then sold those on the TP. But it will be far far easier to get gold once you reach level 80.

savacli.8172:

I can’t imagine people are going to raids for the gold. It’s a nice little top off, but there’s much easier and faster ways to get gold if that’s what we’re truly after. I would argue that we’re in it for the unique rewards (trinkets, minis, skins, etc) and, in the long rung, we’re getting what we need for our Legendary Armors.

Tbh, had I not seen you mention the boss gold being cut in half I probably wouldn’t have ever noticed.

Maybe, but on the long term you would have notice. I mean, raid are still pretty new for a lot of people, so the main motivation are to play the content and getting better at it. I had the same view on fractal when they first appear in the game. But as time pass, we all went through the new content and mastered it. It’s at that moment that the community started to complain a lot about the bad reward fractal was giving us. The same thing will happen with raid if they stay the course.

The RNG reward value will drop over time as we get double and triple of the same skin, same mini, etc. The gold reward will be cut in half and the price of the Ghostly infusion will drop over time. Raid will probably stay fun for me for a long time, but as time pass, less and less players will stop playing them if the reward isn’t there.

The DPS of the guardian in PvE is actually one of the best. It’s 3rd best dps at Sabetha with the hammer build. Of course, Guardian’s dps is sensible to movement (boss move out of their symbol), and to quickness (they lose more dps when losing quickness than most other profession). But still, in most situation, it’s probably between 3 and 5th place in term dps.

For what problem the guardian have.

- Super high unbalance between Virtue of Resolve and Wing of Resolve. The later have a 4 times stronger active.

- Unbalance between Purification and every other heals of the guardian. It’s 60% to 160% stronger than all other heals, while having the added benefice of doing damage.

- The Sword is in a very very bad situation and need a lot of work.

- Litany of Wrath, Merciful Intervention, Signet of Mercy, Signet of Courage and Spirit Weapons all need some major work, because right now. None of them have any use (or very limited one)

- Hallowed Ground and Sanctuary need some small rebalance. They have very narrow and specific use and you can often find a better option in the guardian kitten nal anyway.

- Rebalance of DH trait line, which is way more powerful than most other line. Making it a must have in pretty much all build in all mode. A problem that most profession have these days and that limit build diversity.

- Glacial Heart need to be moved. It’s in the worst place ever and will never be used when it is.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Litany of Wrath: Fully traited (taking into account Part 2), it would heal for 7200 sans healing power, good for 300 hp/s. That’s without dealing any damage either. Considering Thaddeus’ post, that puts it at second best without any drawbacks and a 1/4s cast time.

7200? Litany of Wrath heal for 1640. If you double that, it’s 3280. After that you heal the meditation heals from the trait, so 3280 + 1960 = 5240. It’s equal to 219 hp/sec. Which is great if you ask me because Signet of Resolve have not really any advantage so it’s higher, but Receive the Light also heal allies so it’s lower. It’s think it’s perfect.

What you do to reach 7200 is that you doubled not only the initial self heal from the skill, but you also doubled the healing from Monk’s Focus, which wasn’t in the OP idea.

Right now, Litany of wrath’s initial heal is doing 150 hp/sec not traited. Not really powerful, especially since when you need to use your heal in emergency and probably will do very little damage. That,s why not many people are using it.

savacli.8172:

Re: The rewards. Anyone else have a streak of exotics going on for them right now? For the past 3 weeks (9 kills), I’ve only been getting rares/exotics along with loot bags. On top of that the groups I’ve been in usually average about 3-4 Asecended/Unique drops per kill, but now we’re barely getting 1 or 2. Dry streak of RNG?

Ya. For like 3 weeks I only got like rare and exotic. Then last week I got 2 ascended weapons with a unique skin and the last mini I ddn’t had in one night. RNG is RNG.

1) Repetitive quests. Are you doing Hearts? Yes hearts are boring. They are only there to give something to do to people when they start the game, but they are the pretty bad if you ask me. You don’t need to do them at all. Try the dynamics events intead, by level 40 you have a couple of world boss that you can find the timer on dulfy.net and other website. You can go into EotM if you want to level up quickly. The game for me really start when you hit level 80. It’s been years the last time I wasn’t level 80 so I’m not sure what I used to do really.

2) Warrior is the fastest profession in term of movement. Use a GS and Sword/Warhorn. GS#3, GS#5 and Sword#2 are all movement skill that leap you forward. Add to that Warhorn #4 for some swiftness. The utility skill Bull’s Charge is also a movement skill. You also have the trait Warrior’s Sprint, which is a major adept from Discipline, it give you a 25% movement speed while wielding a melee weapon. With all that you will be the fastest character of the game. Ideal for open world.

3) I really don’t get that question.

4) True and False at the same time. Until level 80 I didn’t bother with it at all. Mostly because, as you level up, you get better gear and you don’t have the charge to always change you gear appearance. If that really get on your nerve, then know that you can transmute whatever skin you want on your low level gear. Hell you can even transmute a legendary on your level 40 weapons. Take a look at the TP. There is some interesting stuff, not so high in price. Cobalt for exemple, it’s a nice looking GS at only like 2-3 Gold.

5) Of course you don’t. You just started the game dude ; ). Don’t worry about that tbh. Craft won’t really help you until the end game. If you still want to level up your crafting, take a look at gw2crafts.net They will give you guides.

6) I don’t know who told you to keep to low level area. Exploring will help you level up faster, gather everything you see, especialy in low level area (meaning like level 60 and less) because you don’t get those material that often when you are level 80, but you still need them to craft your end-game gear so they are worth a lot of gold and gathering give you xp. Like I said, EotM will give be one of the best way to level up, but not everybody like it. Dungeon used to be good, but not anymore. Crafting is also a good way to level up. Use gw2crafts.net to level up to 400 both Cooking and Jeweler. For like 15 Gold you will gain about 14 levels. Don’t know if you have enough gold at this point.

7) Well there is two things here. Not all dynamics boss are done all the time. Most people got for world boss mostly. Again, take a look at a world boss timer and you will know where to go when. You will see 50-100 peoples with you. You also have level 80 maps, which are more popular because most people are level 80. SO maybe you just run in not popular maps. Secondly, there is the mega servers, which sometime doesn’t work well. You could be in a really bad map with low number of people, while there is like 5 versions of that map full of people. I hope one day, anet will make a proper queue system for open world maps to limit that problem.

Yes, for me too leveling to 80 wasn’t the best part of the game. But look at this that way. If you like the game, the time you pass levelling to 80 will only be a tiny fraction of the time in-game.

cranos.5913:

TBH none of us had elite specs until lvl 90+ and regardless of the instabilities we rly didn’t get pressured as hard as pre-HoT. Regardless of that, we did get defensive increases as well as a crazy amount of CC opportunities in this new system giving us even more survivability. IMO at least 75+ dmg should be increased a whole lot to where it feels making a mistake matters rather than “oh well, I’ll just eat the double axes and not give a kitten”.

I don’t know about that. Well, I mean it’s not the first thing I would do, nor the only thing. Increasing dmg at +75 right now would do absolutely nothing. They would still be boring HP Sponge, they would still have some ultra badly designed instability and they would still give no reward since it’s the same daily level 51-100.

If they could fix all of that, then we yes adding some damage at higher level would be nice. It depend also where you add that damage. Outside of raid, the game was always about low number of big attack. I hope that they will continue that way, by leaving the auto-attack of the boss at their current damage and only increase their big attack. It’s on thing to push for a healer in a group of 10 once or twice a week, it’s another to push for a healer in a group of 5, daily. Especially when you only have 2 decent healer out of the 9 professions.